By suggesting that “the ad is the content” during a private conversation at AdTech, Darius Abbassi (Director of eCommerce for MotoSport) perfectly summarized what many video commerce professionals are starting to learn from their campaigns and web analytics reports. Darius articulated this concept for me as general marketing strategy, essentially arguing that shoppers are becoming immune to traditional marketing tactics and make purchasing on content sites. Naturally, we should ask ourselves the same question about video commerce. What types of content work, and doesn’t work. Is a video commerce clip an ad? Or a piece of content?

Let’s think about TV commercials for a moment. Who doesn’t get irritated by the shear amount of advertising that’s invaded our television channels? TV commercials are invasive and most of the times, irrelevant. The Web is supposed to solve this problem, by allowing the user to ignore ads easily, scroll down or simply click away. And because of its measurability, online advertising actually doesn’t leave much room for poor quality advertising. This is why you rarely see TV commercials running on sites as standalone banners. They just don’t work. True, pre-roll and post-roll still allow these type of commercials to exist online, but let’s be honest – who wants to watch a commercial? Whether it’s pre-roll or post-roll, TV ads are an annoyance online.

Online Merchandisers sometimes misinterpret the value of video for e-commerce, thinking that product pages are going to be invaded with TV commercials and high level marketing messages. We can’t blame them – many brands and suppliers are pushing them to reuse the video clips they’ve produced for the television. Clearly, the right approach for persuading prospects to buy products is to use short, well-scripted product videos that add value to the purchasing decision process. They have to show products in a way that’s simply impossible to put into words or photos. They have to be directly relevant to the product that’s been viewed, and yes, they need to be short and to the point to convince a hesitant prospect to make a purchase.

When videos are created with the simple and noble goal to honestly explain, demonstrate or showcase a product, not only can they be used as a conversion machine on product pages, but also as a powerful lead generation tool outside of an e-commerce site. The content is the ad, the ad the content.